Hansard

The bill has certainly been a long time coming. I thank everyone who has been involved, not just in the stage 1 process, but in the years of work that brought us here.

Education reform has consistently been a debate for the 25 years of devolution and, going back, long before that. However, the current cycle probably started around 2017. In that year, the Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee published a report on the performance of our national education agencies—the SQA, Education Scotland, Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council. I sat on the committee at that time, as did the cabinet secretary and Liz Smith. I apologise if I have missed anyone else who is in the chamber who was there at that point.

That report made it very clear to Parliament that Education Scotland and, in particular, the SQA had already lost the trust and confidence of the teaching profession. They were seen as out of touch and hostile to feedback. Not only could they often not communicate with teachers, young people and parents, but they could not even communicate with each other. The clearest example of that is the fact that, in curriculum for excellence, there is a course requirement of 140 hours for national 5 courses and the ability to take up to nine of those courses, but it is not possible to timetable nine times 140 hours. That is the case because Education Scotland was in charge of the number of hours that were required and the SQA was in charge of the number of national 5s that could be taken. Despite being based in the same building, they could not communicate with each other to reconcile that.

One of the areas that we most consistently heard evidence on was the slopey shoulders within education governance in Scotland. That was exemplified by the curriculum for excellence management board, which, when it was asked who was ultimately responsible for any given area, would often simply point the finger at anyone else who was in the room, rather than take responsibility itself.

I want to read out a damning conclusion from that committee report to put it on the record. It said:

“even if the SQA’s position were hypothetically to be accepted, the Committee would still find it difficult to understand how the SQA has fulfilled its role to its core customers, the learners of Scotland, having produced qualifications that have led to an onerous workload, a breakdown in trust and threats of industrial action by teachers”.

That was in 2017. That same conclusion could be come to now.

A clear theme in that report, and in the OECD’s review a few years later, was the lack of accountability for areas of responsibility. Education Scotland got off easy in a lot of ways, because the evidence that we collected on the SQA was so outrageous that, naturally, the focus was on it instead. Significant challenges were unearthed at Education Scotland as well, but the culture at the SQA, especially in senior management, was an area of key concern.

The committee’s top conclusion at that time was:

“The evidence the Committee has received from teachers should give the SQA serious cause for concern. The Committee considers that the distinction in feedback between the Committee’s survey and the SQA commissioned survey is perhaps indicative of the current relationship with teachers. There would appear to be a divergence between what teachers will express to the SQA and what they will express to this Committee. The SQA is invited to review its approach to engaging with teachers to enable candid communication from those with criticisms to make. The SQA also needs to be able to demonstrate how these views impact on the SQA’s processes in order to improve trust.”

Again, the same conclusion has been arrived at years later. An overhaul of communication and a reset of the relationship with teachers simply did not happen.

Fast forward to 2020, and we had the biggest scandal at the SQA since 2000, which was all the more scandalous because of the fact that the SQA and the Government had been warned for months, particularly by Iain Gray and me, about the system that it was designing and the inequalities that were baked into it. I am not ashamed of the transactional politics that happened in the aftermath of that, when, in exchange for our votes in a vote of confidence, the Greens got the grades restored and secured multiple reviews, including what became Professor Hayward’s independent review of qualifications and assessment.

That allows me to make the point that the bill is only one part of a much wider reform picture. Organisational reform needs to go alongside qualification and assessment reform. I welcome the Government’s commitment to more continuous assessment, but I am disappointed that Professor Hayward’s recommendations have largely been rejected or kicked into the long grass. I think that we will be back here in five or 10 years’ time to belatedly accept them.

The Government still has no answer to what I think was the key question that came out of the 2020 scandal. Yes, grades went up across the board, but they went up more for young people from more deprived communities, which poses the question whether exams make our attainment gap worse than it needs to be. I think that the answer to that is yes, but I do not think that the Government has an answer to it either way.

The 2021 alternative certification model proved that continuous assessment can work. The problems were largely with workload and resulted from the decision to cancel exams being taken far too late. However, that whole experience during the pandemic highlighted the key issues of poor communication from the SQA to teachers, students and parents. The bill could be stronger on communication in particular. Section 8 in part 1 requires the strategic advisory council to be consulted, but just the SAC. I will lodge amendments at stage 2 to require wider consultation by qualifications Scotland, of teachers, young people and parents.

The communications challenges go beyond the bill. I will close my opening speech by going back to the evidence that we took recently on this year’s higher history exam. One issue that arose was that the SQA cannot at present directly communicate with students or even with teachers, so it had no ability to directly tell every history teacher in Scotland or every history student what was going on. Does the Government recognise that that is an operational problem that can be resolved with the creation of the new body?

Good communications require not just good platforms but good practice, and for that a far more significant cultural change will be required.

However, I will come on to that in my closing remarks. I have been working on this issue for some time so, as you will imagine, Presiding Officer, I have far more to say than there is time for, but I will conclude now and come on to the cultural challenges and the inspectorate in closing.